Somdev Devvarman was nowhere near to his best as the last year’s runner-up crashed out of the singles event of the Chennai Open after suffering a severe straight-set mauling at the hands of fourth seed Serb Janko Tipsarevic.
Somdev had no clue how to negate the powerful ground strokes of the world number 38 and lost his second round encounter 2-6 1-6 in one hour and 18 minutes.
With Somdev’s defeat Indian challenge has ended in singles event as Rohan Bopanna and Prakash Amritraj have already exited following first round defeats.
As usual Somdev was slow off the blocks and began by dropping his serve in the very first game of the match.
But at the same time Tipsarevic was also struggling and none of them could hold serve till fifth game of the first set.
Once the Serbian got a break he was unstoppable and had Somdev on his knees.
Somdev would now look to do well in the doubles event where he has already made the quarterfinals along with partner Sanam Singh.
Somdev’s defeat would also dent his ranking next week as being the finalist here in 2009,he was to defend points.




